Games I Love… Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

1. Sorry bout not updating as much, I just moved into my dorm and am trying to get settled. I will promise to keep posting unless it’s an school emergency and my life depends on it!

2. Instead of talking bout Metal Gear every five seconds I’m just gonna do a “Games I Love” Post… and a few of them will be Metal Gear.. But not this one!!

Now I love video games with a great, fiery passion, but every now and then there will be a game that is so interesting or fun to play that I fall in love.

A game that can only be described as a combination of Lovecraftian story telling and mind fuck. The story revolves around the young Alexandria Roivas who was called to her grandfather’s Rhode Island mansion to help identify his corpse. Determined to stay in Rhode Island until she can bring her grandfather’s killer to justice Alex soon finds that her grandfather kept many secrets from her. While staying at the mansion Alex finds the Tomb of Eternal Darkness and is soon swept into a conflict between The Ancients that has lasted thousands of years!

While the story oozes with H.P influence the game play is just as amazing. The game is separated into several chapters and revolves around Alex reading the Tomb of Eternal Darkness and uncovering the secrets of the tomb. Each chapter you take control of the poor souls who ran into the tomb in a different era of time and it all leads up to one of the most epic rock, paper, scissor fights ever.

another unique mechanic of the game is the magic system

actually not as complicated as it looks

Picking up the tomb of eternal darkness grants you the access to magic use. The magic system is basically rock, paper, scissors all dolled up. Depending on which Ancient’s essence you choose at the beginning of the game decides your alignment. Red is the powerful Chattur’gha, who is weak to the blue,magical Ulyaoth, who in turn is defenseless to the green, sanity concentrated Xel’lotath who is weak to the red Chattur’gha.

kinda like starter pokemon, but with a death god in the center

This leads me into what is possible the best gimmick in any game ever.As I said earlier when describing the Ancients you have power, magic, and… sanity? Power and Magic are normal when talking about games, but sanity? OK so here is where it really gets good, up in the left corner of the screen you have a little, green sanity bar. If your sanity bar starts depleting then your character starts hallucinating, the super, special, awesome thing about this though is that the game give no indication of when a hallucination starts.

Have Alex walking down a hallway, eh? Something seems a little off though, everything looks a bit bigger, no that’s not it. Is Alex shrinking?! I’M SHRINKING?!? I’M THE SIZE OF AN ANT AND GETTING ATTACKED!!! DID THE GAME GLITCH!?!?!?

-Flash of white-

Alex: This.. ISn’T… HAPPENING!!

This game just loves to mess with you! From character shrinking, explosions, and accidental Shakespearean beheading you won’t know what is real and what is hallucination!

the above image scared the crap out of hundreds of people

Eternal Darkness loves to scare the player as well and takes it one step further and does things that would leave any gamer paranoid. Enter a room and walk around looking for something important when suddenly the channel changes to VIDEO and you scramble to check if you accidentally sat on the remote when it flashes back and you realize… You got me game… You got me. Think that’s bad? The fellas over at Silicon Knights wanted to shake the players to their very core and how do you do that?

This screen made my jaw drop, my controller fall, and my heart break.

Alex and I: THIS…. ISN”T…. HAPPENING!!!

Play this game. If not for the awesome story and magic then for the sanity effects!

-Karinacus the paranoid

P.S. In case you don’t have a Gamecube and just want to see the sanity effects here is a link to them. Oh and though it’s just a rumor, I heard there are plans for a sequel on the WiiU.